The Waste-free Monday experience at Millbrook Winery is great value and as eco as it gets.

MANY restaurants claim to use sustainable produce, but ask them a few casual questions and a large-scale market in the city’s east is invariably name-dropped.

Some of the produce there is local, but the sustainability attributes of commercial farming don’t always measure up to the spray-free, hand-picked standards many customers expect from the trendy term. It’s like wading in to the free-range egg debate — we won’t go there today.

What we will tell you is that Millbrook Winery in Jarrahdale is the real deal. You leave vowing to pull up the pavers and fill the backyard with raised beds.

Chef Guy Jeffries signed on nearly nine years ago and, as a hobby gardener who had long fed his family homegrown produce, set out to replicate things with a lot more land. The chefs do everything — from tending to more than 100 veggie varieties, fruit trees, chooks and ducks, to collecting produce — by hand.

We’re told this in the restaurant while drinking in the vineyard- meets-forest views. I’ve booked ahead for the popular “Waste-free Monday” degustation, which is banging value at $50 a head, and good for the planet.

The kitchen uses up the week’s leftovers in one go, before shutting for Tuesday and Wednesday.

You can’t just walk in because everything is portioned out to the number of diners booked.

There’s no menu, and dishes may differ from table to table as the kitchen uses every last ingredient.

In another considerate move, unfinished bottles of wine can be taken home.

The highly awarded Jeffries is absent on my visit, but it’s always telling when a restaurant sings just as loudly when its star is away.

We start with Manjimup rainbow trout, subtly smoked at Millbrook and smothered in sliced snow peas in a young garlic dressing that also uses oil made from the farm’s olives.

Next is carved avocado with cottage cheese — made onsite — showered in a toasted, seed-rich granola that delivers sting and crunch to the creamy fruit, lifted with lemon juice acidity.

The rare shaved beef is richly bovine, chewy yet tender, and teamed with a sparky sauce combining smashed fresh peas, parmesan, mint and more, garnished with bitter purple leaves.

Then, toasted caramel skin gives way to pert, white rankin cod flesh, the expertly seasoned slab surrounded by fresh green veg, including jacketed broad beans, fennel fronds and baby zucchini in a pea braise.

Half a roasted Wagin duck each seems unbelievably generous, the dense flesh and darkly crisped skin offset with a lentil and leek mix that tastes like stuffing. Mud-like chocolate cake sends us over the edge — it’s ridiculously rich, only minimally lightened by fresh estate berries.

The irritations at Millbrook are minor — it’s hard to get a second glass of wine and water refills are forgotten. But the food is brilliant, and it’s a sustainable experience you can count on.

Millbrook Winery

Address: Old Chestnut Lane, Jarrahdale

Phone: 9525 5796

Open: Thursday to Monday, lunch only

Web: millbrook.wine

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